A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind - by Alfred Starr Hamilton (Paperback)

About the Book

Poetry. Edited by Ben Estes and Alan Felsenthal. Introduction by Geof Hewitt. Though Hamilton wrote thousands of poems during his lifetime, only a small percentage of them ever found their way into print. His poems appeared in small poetry journals during the 60s, 70s and 80s; two chapbooks, The Big Parade and Sphinx; and one full-length collection, The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton, published by The Jargon Society in 1970. In this new volume, Ben Estes and Alan Felsenthal present a collection of Hamilton's poems from these publications, along with many of Hamilton's poems that were previously considered lost and poems from posthumously found notebooks.

"Hamilton is the author of spare, wry, slightly surreal poems that have, so far as I can see, no real equivalent in American English."--Ron Silliman

"Alfred Starr Hamilton 'wrote to the governor of poetry / And simply signed [his] own name.' Consider this collection--assembled by two very dedicated allographers--an essential expansion on said letter. People who've encountered Hamilton's work previously will be glad for the chance to see familiar poems alongside many marvelous new ones. And how I envy first-time readers of this most generous and genuine American writer."--Graham Foust

"It is a hidden world, a hushabye place that Alfred Starr Hamilton occupies, a secluded place where he is free to summon daffodils and stars, chimes and angels, thread and old-fashioned spoons. There is Hungarian damage, blue revolutionary stars, a sedge hammer (which is not a typo). He is obsessively drawn to fine metals--bronze, silver and gold. He would be golden, but can never grasp the elusive sad: 'One cloud, one day / Came as a shadow in my life / And then left, and came back again; and st

Book Synopsis

"Hamilton is the author of spare, wry, slightly surreal poems that have, so far as I can see, no real equivalent in American English." --Ron Silliman

Though Alfred Starr Hamilton wrote thousands of poems during his lifetime, only a small percentage of them ever found their way into print. His poems appeared in small poetry journals during the '60s, '70s and '80s; in two chapbooks, The Big Parade and Sphinx; and in one full-length collection, The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton, published by The Jargon Society in 1970. In this new volume, Ben Estes and Alan Felsenthal present a collection of Hamilton's poems from these publications, along with many of Hamilton's poems that were previously considered lost and poems from posthumously found notebooks.
Alfred Starr Hamilton (1914-2005) was an American poet from Montclair, New Jersey. His publications include the chapbooks Sphinx, The Big Parade and the full-length collection The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton.

Review Quotes

Alfred Starr Hamilton 'wrote to the governor of poetry / And simply signed [his] own name.' Consider this collection--assembled by two very dedicated allographers--an essential expansion on said letter. People who've encountered Hamilton's work previously will be glad for the chance to see familiar poems alongside many marvelous new ones. And how I envy first-time readers of this most generous and genuine American writer.--Graham Foust

Alfred Starr Hamilton's poems are now an open secret thanks to the good work of The Song Cave which has recently printed A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind, an extended collection of Hamilton's poems. Among other things, this is a miracle of retrieval.--Elizabeth Robinson "Colorado Review"

Hamilton is the author of spare, wry, slightly surreal poems that have, so far as I can see, no real equivalent in American English.--Ron Silliman

It is a hidden world, a hushabye place that Alfred Starr Hamilton occupies, a secluded place where he is free to summon daffodils and stars, chimes and angels, thread and old- fashioned spoons. There is Hungarian damage, blue revolutionary stars, a sedge hammer (which is not a typo). He is obsessively drawn to fine metals--bronze, silver and gold. He would be golden, but can never grasp the elusive sad: 'One cloud, one day / Came as a shadow in my life / And then left, and came back again; and stayed' like 'Anything Remembered' which is the title of that poem. He is too removed to see things any other way but his own. It is a silver peepshow in the wonderbush, and there is always a moon to scrape from the bottom of his view.--C.D. Wright

Perhaps you have not heard of the reclusive, generous, 'slightly surreal' poet Alfred Starr Hamilton. You are not alone--his first collection to be published in over 40 years has just appeared from the insistently smart small press The Song Cave. 'A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind: The Poems of Alfred Star Hamilton' is a true pleasure to discover, and includes much unpublished work, thoughtfully gathered from boxes and boxes of the stuff (much of it is now lost).-- "The Poetry Foundation"

We are living in the Badlands. Dorothy's ruby-slippers would get you across the Deadly Desert. So will these poems.--Jonathan Williams

We know of Hamilton because of poets -- in this case Estes and Felsenthal -- not because of literary critics and theorists. They have literally kept his work alive...Despite the harsh circumstances of his life, Hamilton seems never to have lost his sense of the marvelous.--John Yau "Hyperallergic"